20 



INSTINCT. 



city. By this extension the intervals between 

 the combs are unavoidably contracted ; but in 

 winter well-stored magazines are essential, while 

 from their state ot comparative inactivity spa- 

 cious communications are less necessary. On 

 the return of spring, however, when the cells 

 are wanted for the reception of eggs, the bees 

 contract the elongated cells to their former 

 dimensions, and thus re-establish the just dis- 

 tances between the combs which the care of 

 their brood requires. But this is not all. Not 

 only do they elongate the cells of the old combs 

 when there is an extraordinary harvest of honey, 

 but they actually give to the new cells which 

 they construct on this emergency, a much 

 greater diameter as well as a greater depth. 



" The queen-bee, in ordinary circumstances, 

 places each egg in the centre of the pyramidal 

 bottom of the cell, where it remains fixed by 

 its natural gluten : but in an experiment of 

 Huber, one whose fecundation had been re- 

 tarded, had the first segments of her abdomen 

 so swelled that she was unable to reach the 

 bottom of the cells. She therefore attached her 

 eggs (which were those of males) to their lower 

 side, two lines from the mouth. As the larvae 

 always pass that state in the place where they 

 are deposited, those hatched from the eggs in 

 question remained in the situation assigned 

 them. But the working bees, as if aware that 

 in these circumstances the cells would be too 

 short to contain the larvae when fully grown, 

 extended t/ieir length, even before the eggs 

 were hatched. 



" The working bees, in closing up the cells 

 containing larva?, invariably give a convex lid 

 to the large cells of drones, and one nearly flat 

 to the smaller cells of workers; but in an ex- 

 periment instituted by Huber to ascertain the 

 influence of the size of the cells on that of the 

 included larva, he transferred the larvae of 

 workers to the cells of drones. What was the 

 result ? Did the bees still continue blindly to 

 exercise their ordinary instinct ? On the con- 

 trary, they now placed a nearly flat lid upon 

 these large cells, as if well aware of their being 

 occupied by a different race of inhabitants." 



But the most extraordinary of all these varia- 

 tions of the operations of bees are seen in two 

 cases which have been often produced for the 

 sake of experiment, and of which the result 

 appears to have been repeatedly and carefully 

 observed. 



' If a hive be in possession of a queen duly 

 fertilized, and consequently sure, the next sea- 

 son, of a succession of males, all the drones, 

 towards the approach of winter, are massacred 

 by the workers with the most unrelenting fero- 

 city. This would seem to be an impulse as 

 naturally connected with the organization and 

 very existence of the workers, as that which 

 leads them to build cells or store up honey. 

 But however certain the doom of the drones if 

 the hive be furnished with a duly fertilized 

 queen, their undisturbed existence through the 

 winter is equally certain if the hive has lost 

 its sovereign, or if her impregnation has been 

 so retarded as to make a succession of males in 

 the spring doubtful ; in such a hive the workers 



do not destroy a single drone, though the hot- 

 test persecution rages in all the hives around 

 them." 



Again, " in a hive which no untoward event 

 has deprived of its queen, the workers take no 

 other active steps in the education of her suc- 

 cessors, those of which one is to occupy her 

 place when she has flown oft' at the head of a 

 new swarm in spring, than to prepare a certain 

 number of cells of extraordinary capacity for 

 their reception while in the egg, and to feed 

 them when become grubs with a peculiar food 

 until they have attained maturity. This, there- 

 fore, is their ordinary instinct ; and it may hap- 

 pen that the workers of a hive may have no neces- 

 sity, for a long series of successive generations, 

 to exercise any other. But suppose them to lose 

 their queen. Far from sinking into that inac- 

 tive despair which was formerly attributed to 

 them, after the commotion which the rapidly- 

 circulated news of their calamity gave birth to 

 has subsided, they betake themselves with an 

 alacrity from which man, when under misfor- 

 tune, might deign to take a lesson, to the repa- 

 ration of their loss. Several ordinary cells are 

 without delay pulled down and converted into 

 a variable number of royal cells, capacious 

 enough for the education of one or more queen- 

 grubs selected out of the unhoused working 

 grubs which in this pressing emergency are 

 mercilessly sacrificed and fed with the appro- 

 priate royal food to maturity. Thus sure of 

 once more acquiring a head, the hive return to 

 their ordinary labours, and in about sixteen 

 days one or more queens are produced, one of 

 which steps into day and assumes the reins of 

 state." 



There can be no doubt that the perfect order 

 and regularity seen in all the operations of 

 these societies of insects could not be main- 

 tained without some mode of communication 

 among the different individuals concerned in 

 these operations ; and it appears distinctly that 

 such means of communication exist, and that 

 it is in consequence of their being exercised, 

 for example, that a swarm of bees, when it 

 leaves a hive, takes the direction to a spot pre- 

 viously fixed on, and carefully examined, by a 

 small number of scouts, as observed by Mr. 

 Knight.* 



When such facts are duly considered, we 

 cannot be surprised to find so intelligent a na- 

 turalist as Mr. Spence acknowledging that he 

 had at one time arranged them as indications 

 of reason in these animals. But on further 

 consideration, we shall probably see cause to 

 acquiesce in his later and more matured judg- 

 ment, which ascribes them to strictly instinc- 

 tive, although singularly varying propensities ; 

 chiefly on two grounds, which exactly corre- 

 spond to what was stated in the beginning of 

 this paper as the most distinctive characters of 

 instinct : 1 . that although various contrivances 

 are fallen on by all bees to enable them to con- 

 tinue their usual operations under varying ex- 

 ternal circumstances, yet there is no such variety 

 observed either in the conduct of individuals 



* Phil. Trans. 1807. 



